


Equivalent Exchange

by bmouse



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Canon Cardassia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-18
Updated: 2013-10-18
Packaged: 2017-12-29 18:09:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1008440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the ficwar prompt: "So apparently to become a Cardassian citizen, one must have a molar extracted. Julian's not looking forward to it..."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equivalent Exchange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tinsnip](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinsnip/gifts).



At first he was a little annoyed at the length of the processing period, but now that the wait was almost over he can’t deny that it’s preying on his mind a little. The procedure just seems like so much ponderous formality. He’s already sworn the Principal Vow before his Healer's oaths and his certification brand and his official papers are so flawless that he's grudgingly accepted as a servant of the State even in the most remote provinces.

 

Now there's just this one thing left over and then he can legally marry the contrary bastard he lives with, the small matter of the tooth.

 

Jules had had a tooth out when he was six, he remembers that much. Mum had tried to explain the bit about the door closing and the string but in the end he had thrashed and tried to turn his head away when she slipped the floss loop over the molar. Afterwards he'd cried and hid under the tablecloth when she tried to show him the cleaned white thing that was part-of-him and not-part. The gap had been the worst - the absence of something he used to have just last week seemed monstrously unfair and he had worried it with his tongue until it bled again, down his chin and onto the collar of a new shirt.

 

Seven year old Julian had pulled and labeled his own teeth, reaching in for the loose ones with steady hands and a pair of Mother’s boiled-sterilized tweezers. Everything about the process just seemed so fascinating. When he brought them in and correctly identified two types of cavities the teacher gave him extra credit.

 

Forget the pain or anything - that was a ridiculous thing to be afraid of, he’s been _shot_ , and all in all it was only a bit of bone. He’s given up worse for things he’s wanted. It’s just... adult teeth don’t grow back, even on people like him. He's not looking forward to the gap.

 

What he is looking forward to is his choice of location. They go to an old teaching hospital - the undisputed kingdom of one Olissa Zalar one of the first People to see any value in a drifting ex-Federation doctor and most importantly one of the few with actual authority. She had put him through several kinds of crash-course residency hell and by the end of it he had a medical exam story that put his old one to shame and a bureaucrat-proof right to practice medicine in the Union.

 

He could just imagine the incredulous town officials calling back asking ‘really, this, _foreigner’s_ certificates are in order?’ and her blinking back at them in that placidly threatening way that he probably found comforting after years of Garak, with the implication ringingly clear that yes, she had certified the extra pair of hands which were currently doing good work in their clinics and was it really appropriate to bother a woman of her advanced rank and years with such a trivial matter.

 

True, her sense of romance had been slightly wounded when it turned out that the 'friend’ he was desperately trying to find wasn't some willowy lady of quality but a man known largely by his fearsome reputation, but Garak, like some insidiously charming tree root has found purchase even in this seemingly sheer cliff. Lately she had begun to enquire about his health during their calls. Now, after sweeping her eyes over Julian from head to toe and finding some improvement in his weight and carriage and his obviously handmade new shirt she favors Garak with a nod that is downright warm.

 

He is further surprised when after catching up in the lobby she follows them into the procedure room.

“Well, young man,” she says archly “in your honor they’ve overbooked the afternoon so don’t bother asking - all the other doctors are busy.” her eyes catch Garak’s for an instant “And we’re down to the backup supplies from the Federati.”

 

They think they’re being so clever. The standard anesthetic, calibrated rather understandably for non-Human physiology isn’t particularly harmful but it knocks him out like a rifle butt to the back of the head, with a migrane to match when he wakes up. Of course the Federation one is kinder. Here’s something nobody will believe; he’s been gawked at by Cardassians, insulted by them and occasionally even threatened with violence and then there are times when every blessed one of them in his vicinity conspires to try and take care of him.

 

With such formidable foes there’s nothing to be done and he graciously mumbles something about 'of course, the shortages' and tries not to smile too obviously. A kind of calm slips into him even before the little sting of the hypo, it’s just a little thing a bit of pain and a little bit of bone gone and also something so significant that that his mentor’s eyes are full of restrained pride, that Garak’s expression as he watches him sit in the patient’s chair is almost reverent. It’s a thing with layers of weight and significance in a land where two suns can throw six shadows on every little stone it’s all going to be just fine.

 

He never quite blacks out exactly but when he comes to a more habitual level of consciousness he’s on the cushioned floor of the waiting room with a blanket pulled over him and his head resting in Garak's lap. There doesn't seem to be any pain. Garak’s hand carefully fits itself under his jaw on the other side, tilts his head up, the other one produces a little curved hand mirror out of somewhere he can’t keep track of and under the familiar gentle pressure of a thumb at the hinge of his mandible his mouth falls open.

 

And he’s trying to be good, he’s trying but his tongue has just remembered how to move again and it’s tracing along his lateral incisor, to the canine and back to find...

 

He makes a small sound of surprise.

 

"Yes, it looks very well. I must say, it’s a good thing you're doing this now - a hundred years ago the replacement would have been stone."

 

He reaches up and takes the mirror.

 

It’s a good likeness. Of course she must have scanned the original tooth after extraction, though it seems a little bit sharper than before. Cardassia will do that to a tooth.

 

Carved into the side is his identification number and "Chu'ri'en Bashir, next-of-kin: Elim Garak" Which, well. He’s quite all-right with that, actually. His fiance’s family is dead, this may be the closest he’ll get to an official blessing.

 

As he slowly sits up Garak’s arm closes around his shoulders, over the blanket. Much to Julian’s amusement he seems to be radiating a kind of possessive satisfaction. He wants to quip that it’s technically Cardassia that’s getting him today. Though Garak, being a fraction of Cardassia (one of hundreds of millions, though he really should get weighted higher given how much he loves her), is then entitled to an equal fraction of him (what is a suitably romantic 1/10000000th of a Julian? a cell from his great cardiac vein?). His usual math is useless here and he’s too floaty to say all this as prettily as he’d like so he finds Garak’s other hand and gives it a fond squeeze, lets his head drop to rest against his shoulder.

 

The new tooth feels pleasantly cold and smooth as he runs his tongue over it. His Citizenship application is complete. His colleagues will toast him tomorrow and tonight his husband-to-be will curl and coil around him in their shared bed and perhaps in the morning he could tell him if there is a difference between the old and the new.

 

\- fin -

**Author's Note:**

> * the Great Cardiac Vein - begins at the //apex of the heart// and ascends along the anterior longitudinal sulcus to the base of the ventricles.


End file.
